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Friday, June 22, 2012

Fellow author, awesome dude named Dan, and local citizen of my city mentioned me in a great blog post of his on storytelling through various mediums. Dan Kolbet gave me the honor of beta reading for his rocking sci-fi thriller novel Off The Grid. I must say, he's a great writer and a great storyteller. His post is about a video he made for his work that he's proud of. Dan makes great videos, I saw one he made with his family about them enjoying the holiday season. As someone who has gone to school and made videos professionally now at my day job, I was very impressed with his little family video. It was very well done, and it made me laugh quite a bit. So a huge thanks to Dan for repaying the favor to beta read my novel and for mentioning me on his awesome site. Support a fellow awesome indie author and go buy his book Off The Grid, because you'll love it and it rocks as does Dan.

The Dream | First ever fan fiction - flash fiction

Also, look for a new form of storytelling I've never tried before to hit my podcast feed tomorrow: Flash Fiction. It's a story which takes place in the story world of Peter Pan created by J.M. Barrie. I share updates as well as info about the other podcasting I've been up to lately. Since you're super cool you can get the .mp3 here a day early because you read my blog!

Friday, June 15, 2012

Donald Conrad of www.did-not-finish.com and Dan
Absalonson of www.DanDanTheArtMan.com talk about
video games, writing, being husbands with awesome wifes and fathers of many
young children, what life is like as dads and lots of other stuff. In this first
episode they talk about they met, their interests, and their art. Donald blogs
about finishing his enormous back log of video games and creates graphic novels.
Dan writes and podcasts short stories and has his first full length novel coming
out soon.

Monday, June 11, 2012

We just moved, which means unpacking a lot of boxes. Some of these boxes were left unpacked at our last house. I'm not sure why, I guess we either didn't have the room for all the stuff in the boxes, or we knew we would eventually move again so we just left it unpacked. Either way, I have been finding stuff that I haven't seen since my wife and I first moved back to our hometown from Seattle. One of the things in a box I found while unpacking was a collection of stories and poems I wrote in college for a creative writing class. I was majoring in multimedia and animation but to earn a bachelors I had to take a certain amount of elective classes. I've always liked writing and so I was excited to have an elective class that I knew I would like. Anyways, I started reading through some of the poems in this book. There are a couple short stories, but I remember those so I just read a few of the poems. Some of them I forgot all about, and one of them I really like. I remember recording it and putting a little bit of animation to it for one of my animation class projects. Who knew then that I was learning how to create a podcast? No one because podcasts didn't exist for another year or two.

I'm sure I have the documents printed on these pages I found somewhere on a disk in box in the basement, but writing them back out will probably be faster than finding them. So over the next little while as I finish the third draft of my novel I'm going to publish some of them on here in text and audio. I'll post my favorite one first. It's about how much I like coffee. Reading these reminds me of being in school. Man that was a long time ago, coming up on a decade in a year or so here. That is crazy. Anyways. Look for some old poems of mine to come soon. Have a nice weekend!

Friday, June 8, 2012

I don't watch much TV. From Lost successfully masquerading as a smart show to the cancellation of Firefly, there are too many examples of how the medium has been circling the drain for me to bother engaging with it anymore. At this point, its main purpose is product placement for advertisers.Well, LOST didn't have much product placement, but Sawyer should have done some L'Oreal ads. That man had sexy hair.

The physical TV set is still important to me, but it takes six whistled notes to get me back to a time when I cared about the programming: the opening notes of Chris Carter's The X-Files. (After Mulder left, it became Magic Crap X-Files, but I like to focus on when it was really good.)Only a handful of TV shows moved me in any direction other than “towards the remote,” but The X-Files is forever infused into who I am. And one episode made me doubt whether I wanted to stay in my skin.

"Home" No matter how hard I try, I will never forget this episode. I sat with a blanket tucked under my nose while my eyes bulged from my face. A loud voice in the back of my head was not-so-gently telling me to turn off the TV, but I remained frozen in terror no matter how hard I tried to force myself to move.The pure horror contained in just the first few moments of this episode is enough to embarrass any Hollywood production. I will never forget its visceral impact, and now that I am a father I find it even more terrifying, twisted, and revolting.A newborn is found in a shallow grave, and the method of its discovery dares your body to not convulse in shivers. As the viewer, you know it was buried alive — you were there when it was born.

The true nature of the forces at work remains hidden for most of the episode. As Mulder and Scully investigated the run-down farmhouse near the infant’s remains, a knot started forming in my stomach. Something was so wrong! Then, they showed an eye.

Not two eyes, just one. One very evil eye watching my favorite paranormal detectives from under the floor of the house. The agents’ intrusion does not sit well with the building’s occupants, and it leads to a second gut-wrenching twist in this oh-so-dark episode: the farmhouse residents get their old car running, put on some golden oldies, and drive into town to viciously murder the sheriff.

You don't directly see the violence —just the terrified wife hiding under the bed, watching as her husband is beat to death with a baseball bat. The horror she experienced was shared with me.

Then, off camera, you also hear her brutal death.

I remember looking at my clock and wishing for the hour to be up. The madness had to stop.

The new deaths drove Mulder and Scully to action, and they headed to the farmhouse to find the people responsible for all three murders. They did just that, and the episode that couldn't possibly deal any more horror was quietly laughing at me.

The messed up part of this episode wasn't everything that I had just witnessed. It was what came next.

I don't know anything about rural Pennsylvania but after watching this, I knew I didn't want to visit there. The Peacocks are the family who own the farmhouse. Under the bed in the main room of the house, they find a woman with her arms cut off at the elbows and her legs cut off at the knees. Outside three males that look like deformed monsters are busy rounding up pigs as Mulder and Scully look around. As Scully looks over family photos hanging in dusty frames, you are presented with a fact. The father of two of the males outside is also their brother.

The Peacocks have been keeping it in the family for generations. This amplified the horror of everything. EVERYTHING! To make it worse, not only was the mother okay with all of this, but I had no clue if she was the sister to the three outside. My mind swirled with the implications of the reveal.

TV shows are generally careful about their depiction of gun violence. Not this episode. Two of the Peacocks end up in a physical fight with Mulder. It is a scene that had me inches from my TV screen. It wasn't lots of camera angles and flashy close ups. It was just Scully from behind as she tried to line up a shot. In the background, Mulder fought for his life. I am sure I knew that the main character of the show wouldn't die in the second episode of the new season, but there I was trying to process everything that was happening, watching Mulder get choked to death.

The gun shot was profound. There was no dramatic death moment for the Peacock boy. Just a pop, and he fell over. The survivor broke his attack on Mulder to chase Scully. This resulted in a death by his own design. They had the house booby trapped. A spiked hammer found it's way into his spine. It was unrelenting and refused to let me look away.The horror was done. All the loose ends could be tied up. Right? I needed them to be tied up. The Mother and youngest Peacock were gone. In a bid to finish in a way that could never be forgotten, they showed the Peacock's car sitting on the side of a dirt road. Mother Peacock is giving a voice over about starting the family over again, moving to a new home, going back to how it was. Then, the trunk opens. Youngest Peacock climbs out adjusting his pants. They drive off into the night.

It's over, but, it didn't matter. I had already seen it, and I couldn't undo that.

For all the things that made me want to turn off the TV and hide under my bed forever, I do realize that it is one of the best pieces of American television ever produced. It is the first time I ever felt that base-line kind of fear. Shows like "The River" tried to envoke it with sudden sounds and spooky found footage but failed to even touch a little bit of what made "Home" scary.

I spent years seeking out the thrill that the episode provided. I found it in a game called Dead Space and more recently Amnesia: The Dark Decent. After years of thinking, I can pinpoint what makes that X-Files episode amazing. It wasn't trying to be scary, horrible, or grotesque. It was made like any other X-Files episode. It's the human element that made it what it was. The way it slowly presented progressively twisted facts. It's use of camera placement to conceal the truth of what was being dealt with. Showing a living newborn being buried.

I now realize that this was not just a TV memory, but this was something that effected me on a deeper level. For all that "Home" visited on me, I do go back and watch it from time to time. Without fail I am taken back to that dark room in the basement of my parents' house, sitting in the flicker of my ancient TV as "Home" is experienced for the first time again.

Bio:

Donald Conrad is an artist, writer, and blogger who writes about video games, family, and many other things. He is a devoted husband and loving father of four. You can find his hilarious and well written posts over at his website www.did-not-finish.com. We live in the same town and rumor has it we may be staring up a podcast together, so he just might be my cohost as we talk video games, writing, books, movies, TV, and more. Stay tuned to both of our sites to find out when our first episode drops. Until then, Donald posts regularly on his site and his posts are great and you can follow him on twitter.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

If you have not heard this album, you owe it to yourself to give it a listen. Ray Charles can write melodies like no one else. From Wikipedia:

Ray Sings, Basie Swings is a posthumously created album that mixes previously unreleased Ray Charles vocal performances, recorded at live concerts in the mid-1970's, together with newly recorded instrumental tracks by the contemporary Count Basie Orchestra.

How cool is that?! It is amazing. If you don't like Ray Charles now, you will after you have listened to this album. You may not like every song on the album, but his talent is undeniable. I first heard about this album on NPR's website. If you click that link you can go read and listen to them talking about it. There also a Making Of video on YouTube. Check it out and have the wind taken out of you.

Monday, June 4, 2012

Overall I loved this story and it was so much fun getting to spend more time with some great characters I have come to love. That said I gave it 4 out of 5 stars because of some pretty disappointing story choices. They were very disappointing, but the fact that I still gave a 4 out of 5 shows how much I enjoyed most of the story, and really, how much I love the characters and setting of this book. The end of the book was full of exciting page turning action that was fun to read. I will be reading the next one in the series. Let's hope the writer doesn't take any easy outs this time. When I started the first book in this series it was because I had just finished a bunch of Stephen King and I needed something totally different. It's funny, but I think Robyn Carr shares her best strength with Stephen King - characterization. She writes characters I love, and he writes characters that carry me through a sometimes slow story. The difference is that Stephen King can write circles around Robyn Carr, his prose makes hers seem dull and flat - but I absolutely love her characters and I can't stop reading so she's got that skill. I have to find out what happens to her characters. I'm sure as I continue to read through her books I'll find her skills at crafting prose develop, but in the mean time I love her characters enough to HAVE to know what happens to them in the next book. I never thought I would EVER find myself reading a romance series, but I truly enjoy these books. If anything I'm hoping to learn how she has managed to write so many books in a series. It is pretty mind blowing that her latest, Redwood Bend, is Virgin River book 18! That is a lot of books! So I'll keep reading out of my genres to keep finding out what happens next with her great characters that she does a decent job of writing about.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

A delightful and truly Canadian tale of a 12 year old boy's quest to protect his prairie town of Cranberry Flats, and in his search to acquire super-powers finds the most awesome power of all lies within his own inherent integrity.

I first came into contact with Mike from listening to his awesome writing podcast called Get Published. I started leaving feedback for his show and following him on Twitter. We have become good friends, for two guys who have never met, having lots of fun sharing our adventures in writing and life online. The first book I consumed of his was Galaxy Billies, which he has available as a free podcast novel or podiobook, on his website and over at Podiobooks.com. It had me busting up with laughter, and I really enjoyed the adventerous story. You will too so go check it out, and when Mik Murdoch comes out buy a copy, and then share it with your kid(s), nephews, neighbors down the street. I would suggest getting it right from the publishers website. They're the next link in this post. I love reading Young Adult fiction because I'm still a young adult at heart and it is what I usually find myself writing. I can't wait to have a copy of Mike's debut novel Mik Murdoch, published by Five Rivers Publishing, on my bookshelf.